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Our first observations must be directed to what passes in the
Sensible realm for Substance. It is, we shall agree, only by
analogy that the nature manifested in bodies is designated as
Substance, and by no means because such terms as Substance or
Being tally with the notion of bodies in flux; the proper term
would be Becoming.
But Becoming is not a uniform nature; bodies comprise under the
single head simples and composites, together with accidentals or
consequents, these last themselves capable of separate
classification.
Alternatively, Becoming may be divided into Matter and the Form
imposed upon Matter. These may be regarded each as a separate
genus, or else both may be brought under a single category and
receive alike the name of Substance.
But what, we may ask, have Matter and Form in common? In what
sense can Matter be conceived as a genus, and what will be its
species? What is the differentia of Matter? In which genus,
Matter or Form, are we to rank the composite of both? It may be
this very composite which constitutes the Substance manifested in
bodies, neither of the components by itself answering to the
conception of Body: how, then, can we rank them in one and the
same genus as the composite? How can the elements of a thing be
brought within the same genus as the thing itself? Yet if we
begin with bodies, our first-principles will be compounds.
Why not resort to analogy? Admitted that the classification of
the Sensible cannot proceed along the identical lines marked out
for the Intellectual: is there any reason why we should not for
Intellectual-Being substitute Matter, and for Intellectual Motion
substitute Sensible Form, which is in a sense the life and
consummation of Matter? The inertia of Matter would correspond
with Stability, while the Identity and Difference of the
Intellectual would find their counterparts in the similarity and
diversity which obtain in the Sensible realm.
But, in the first place, Matter does not possess or acquire Form
as its life or its Act; Form enters it from without, and remains
foreign to its nature. Secondly, Form in the Intellectual is an
Act and a motion; in the Sensible Motion is different from Form
and accidental to it: Form in relation to Matter approximates
rather to Stability than to Motion; for by determining Matter's
indetermination it confers upon it a sort of repose.
In the higher realm Identity and Difference presuppose a unity at
once identical and different: a thing in the lower is different
only by participation in Difference and in relation to some other
thing; Identity and Difference are here predicated of the
particular, which is not, as in that realm, a posterior.
As for Stability, how can it belong to Matter, which is distorted
into every variety of mass, receiving its forms from without, and
even with the aid of these forms incapable of offspring.
This mode of division must accordingly be abandoned.
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